Before he wrote Taxi Driver or Raging Bull, Paul Schrader was a film critic. “I went to the dark side in the ’70s and started screenwriting,” Schrader, who can currently be seen reflecting on his decades-long collaboration with Martin Scorsese in the new Apple TV docuseries Mr. Scorsese, recently told Vanity Fair. “But you cannot write criticism and make films at the same time. The danger of offending someone is too great.”
But as he approaches 80, Schrader has begun to embrace that danger. Schrader is chronically, confidently online: He has called Saltburn a “bad film,” Joker: Folie à Deux a “really bad musical,” and declared that modern moviegoing audiences are “dumber” than they used to be. His later-career films, from The Canyons to Oh, Canada, have cast some of the biggest (and most controversial) stars of the 21st century. The auteur has also openly expressed his support for AI, documented his hatred for President Donald Trump, and urged his followers to partake in No Kings protests. With his 2022 film Master Gardener—about a horticulturist whose torso sports hidden neo-Nazi ink—Schrader even inadvertently anticipated the viral controversy of Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner and his Nazi tattoo.
Schrader caught up with VF to chat about having his finger on the pulse of culture for half a century, becoming a pioneer for boomers using social media correctly, and why, sure, he’d make an AI movie.
Vanity Fair: Did you anticipate that your film criticism on Facebook would go so viral?
Paul Schrader: It’s not very viral. It’s 56,000, I think, is where it is now. That’s a stadium full of people, but it’s not, you know, a K-pop star.
But a lot of your Facebook posts get screenshotted, then go viral on X.
Apparently. I’m not on [X] myself, so I don’t know—but I’ve heard this.
Have you felt as though you’ve started a conversation? Do you respond to comments?
Yeah, a number of times. I don’t think that it’s the place for vitriol. If anybody uses vitriol—and by that I mean name-calling and slander, vulgarity, language—if anybody gets into that lane, I immediately block them because I’m not interested in that way. I have to try to keep my comments encouraging of conversation rather than being judgmental.
